Observations and lessons learned to help us constantly do better. Feel free to post anything you think may be helpful. Post at the top. We'll re-organize by topic every so often to aid the reader.
January 2014
Rough winter, daytime temperatures in the high 70's and nighttime in the 40s with no rain. Packman Broccoli goes from beginning head to flowers in 4-6 days. Aphids were a problem in January's warm weather
Snowball cauliflower planted in Sept and Cheddar, Graffiti, Veronica planted later but both formed heads about the same time. Maybe better to plant cauliflower in the cooler weather (Oct). .
Snow peas planted in Sept-Oct began producing in January. Snow peas planted in Jan began sprouting in a couple of weeks. January seems to be the best time to plant peas.
November 15, 2013
Radishes & carrots need to honor spacing requirements. Planted too close together development. Radishes need to be harvested within time suggested on package, otherwise it becomes tough and spicy.
Broccoli needs to be fertilized with high phosphorous fertilizer about 2 weeks after planting. Needs to be when growth is taking off and before heads develop.
Peas were slow to germinate and grow. Started some in late Sept, again in early Oct. Might be best to plant in mid-end October. Growth seems to be happening in early November.
Seeding musclun and bok choy in early Oct seems to work well. Takes about 5 weeks from seed to first harvest.
AUGUST 30, 2013
Summer Squash
Dunja Green zucchini and Golden Glory zucchini were good producers and held up well through the summer. Magda Mexican squash started out good, plant fell victim to powdery mildew and reduced production by end of July. If Magda is planted again, it should be planted in succession (planted in early spring and replanted end of June). We had a good crop of Dunja zucchini in Row 6 that produced a consistent crop throughout
the summer months. We fertilized regularly at least once a month with Fish Emulsion and trimmed lower leaves and dead leaves regularly.
At one point we thought we were too aggressive with cutting although it proved to be beneficial.
Bush Beans:
Green Contender provided excellent crop, yellow beans (variety?) under performed. Italian flat beans were susceptible to nematodes. In row 8, we started with seedlings, grown from seeds that had been planted in seed trays. We planted the seedlings about 18-24” apart (with worm castings), along both sides of each watering tape, in a staggered (or zig zag) pattern to avoid having 2 plants directly facing each other across a watering tape. (This first batch only took up half of our row.) We spread Miramar compost over the soil as mulch and covered the seedlings with row covers for about 3 wks. We soaked and planted more seeds in a seed tray in preparation for planting in the rest of the row. When we planted this batch of seedlings, for some reason, they were attacked by bugs (pill bugs mostly, I think) and we lost a lot of them. So we started sowing seeds directly into the ground (and without soaking). Did this a couple times. Overall, we planted around 80 seeds in this half of the row (in the same pattern as earlier: zig zagging along both sides of each watering tape). Figured it was better to have too many plants (that could be thinned if needed) than too few. We sprinkled DE at the base of the plants in hopes of stopping the pill bugs. Finally these seeds started growing and thriving.
Shortly after this, we also added some leggy yellow bush bean plants that Roy gave us. We planted them deeper in the ground to give them better support. These plants didn’t produce as well as the green beans and seemed more susceptible to aphids. We fertilized down both watering tapes about a month after getting the plants in the ground.
One other note: After getting the bean seedlings and/or seeds in the ground, we planted lettuce seedlings all the way down the middle of our row. These grew quickly while the beans were still small. Worked pretty well. Had a whole harvest of lettuces by the time the bean plants grew too big for more.
Peppers:
Tried various varieties this year. The Ethnic Sweet Mellow shishito peppers produced extremely well, as did most of the chilies (varieties?). As for the peppers, the Snapper outgrew other varieties and seemed less susceptible to wilting and yellowing (better root system?). Next year we will grow Snapper and try to improve our pepper production using more early fertilizer to get the root system going and a bit of shade when temperatures starting hitting the mid 80s. Roy uses black shade cloth to loosely cover.
Tomatoes
What a fiasco! Mistake was using only one variety, San Diego, which was not nematode resistant. Next year we will grow Celebrity VFN and a roma style. Per Roy's suggestion.
Winter Squash
Looks like a winner, timing with the green beans worked well. Maybe next year we could plant an early crop of the Mexican squash and follow up with a July planting of winter squash. There are two varieties, Sugar Bear Acorn and JWS Butternut.
I planted the seeds on 7/9/13 in 6-pack seed trays (two 6-packs for each type of squash) and put them outside in my backyard. Following pkg directions, I planted 2 seeds in ea section and thinned to one after they started growing. I used nursery potting soil mixed with Dr. Earth 5-7-3. Seeds sprouted within 2-3 days. They were a nice seedling size when we planted them in the ground (in row 8) on 7/28/13.
Both types of squash grew really well—immediately sprouted lots and lots of blooms but the butternut squash grew a lot more fruit. Butternut was a vining variety; the acorn squash was a bush variety that grows mini acorns. Most of the acorns were really small; larger variety might be better next time<?> I grew a bush variety at home and it grew about 8 acorns per plant—not as big as store-bought but bigger than the minis. Better growth of butternut could also be related to growth issues on the east end of the row (where we planted the acorn squash), which could be related to tree roots or something else.
Both plants developed massive aphid and powdery mildew problems. Fruit that was already a certain size (which was a lot, especially on the butternut plants) didn’t seem too bothered. But new fruit and blooms died almost immediately. By mid Oct the plants looked pretty bad but the established fruit looked fine, with butternuts turning brown and stems on all starting to dry out. I took home 1 small acorn and 1 small butternut and cooked them up on week of Oct 13. The acorn had hardly any meat (it was very small) and the meat was kind of watery. But it tasted ok after roasting and being mixed with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. The butternut was also small but more like what you’d expect from butternut squash—had decent amount of flesh and tasted fine (cooked same way). I think this variety of butternut squash is worth trying again. Looks like about 90 lbs total harvest of butternut squash. I'd say this one's a keeper for next time. Plus 21 lbs acorn squash.
Onions, scallions, (garlic)
There is a learning curve to growing these biennials! The correct variety for our climate planted at the correct time seems to be the key to success. Most of the onions we harvested this year came from spring planted seeds and did quite well as scallions or small bulb onions. Garlic was probably the wrong variety and was marginal.
Herbs
Basil flourished and seemed to like growing under the dappled shade of larger plants. We grew cilantro all summer! It was smaller and did rush to seed, so a succession planting with one harvest would probably work best for summer-grown cilantro. Best part was seeing all the ladybeetles and larvae on the flowering heads. One stand of Italian leaf parsley also did well. Need to increase cilantro production next summer. Not sure if there is a parsley demand, but more wouldn't hurt.
Lettuce, carrots, beets, radishes
The carrots, radishes, and beets were a spring holdover. All did well but we need to increase the production. We learned we could grow lettuce in the summer under shade. All of the loose head varieties seemed to do well. The layout of the soaker hose in the squares interferes with optimal planting, but the new hose layout should improve our use of space in the square beds. Also need to keep track of the varieties planted so we know what works the best.
Eggplant
Another fiasco because of the flea beetles, and eggplant did so well the previous year! I've since read that eggplant should be planted with catmint to repel or foil the flea beetles. Do we try again next year?
Please post your comments, your feedback is important!
Janice
POLE BEANS
5/15/11 - Lori - The pole bean seeds that we took home and grew into seedlings before planting appear to be doing MUCH better than the seeds we planted directly into the ground.
CUCUMBERS
8/29/10 - Jane - The cucumbers, planted mid-June, did well, but it was not expected that they would start dying off in late August, long before the hot season was over. We (or at least I) thought they would keep producing throughout the hot season. We ended up replanting the bed with cucumber seeds in late August. Next time we could anticipate this die-off and start seeds in a timely manner to minimize down time between old and new crops of cucumbers.
MARKING SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS
9/19/10 - Jane - We learned that we needed highly visible markers for new seeds and seedlings to ensure they got daily watering even when the mature plants didn't need water. Sandy Strong found some bright red flags at Home Depot and marked all the seeds and seedlings. That seems to be working well.
GEYSERS IN SOAKER HOSES
9/19/10 - Jane -- We learned that our soaker hoses spring geysers that waste water by squirting water where it isn't needed. The geysers themselves can be hard to spot, so the way to find them is to look for patches of wet ground in the beds or in the paths that shouldn't be wet. There will be a geyser spraying on them. We think that PVC tape wrapped around the hose at the location of the geyser is working. We don't care if the tape leaks a bit -- soaker hoses are supposed to leak -- we just don't want the water shooting somewhere unintended in the form of a geyser. Possible lesson learned -- the soaker hoses from Home Depot may not be the highest quality. There are more expensive, and therefore possibly better, ones on line.
BUSH BEANS
10/10/10 - Jane -- Bush beans solved one problem -- we didn't have to purchase or install poles or a lattice -- but the harvesters paid the price. The beans were LOW and HIDDEN. They had the harvesters wishing for pole beans.
Observations and lessons learned to help us constantly do better. Feel free to post anything you think may be helpful. Post at the top. We'll re-organize by topic every so often to aid the reader.
January 2014
November 15, 2013
AUGUST 30, 2013
Shortly after this, we also added some leggy yellow bush bean plants that Roy gave us. We planted them deeper in the ground to give them better support. These plants didn’t produce as well as the green beans and seemed more susceptible to aphids. We fertilized down both watering tapes about a month after getting the plants in the ground.
One other note: After getting the bean seedlings and/or seeds in the ground, we planted lettuce seedlings all the way down the middle of our row. These grew quickly while the beans were still small. Worked pretty well. Had a whole harvest of lettuces by the time the bean plants grew too big for more.
Both types of squash grew really well—immediately sprouted lots and lots of blooms but the butternut squash grew a lot more fruit. Butternut was a vining variety; the acorn squash was a bush variety that grows mini acorns. Most of the acorns were really small; larger variety might be better next time<?> I grew a bush variety at home and it grew about 8 acorns per plant—not as big as store-bought but bigger than the minis. Better growth of butternut could also be related to growth issues on the east end of the row (where we planted the acorn squash), which could be related to tree roots or something else.
Both plants developed massive aphid and powdery mildew problems. Fruit that was already a certain size (which was a lot, especially on the butternut plants) didn’t seem too bothered. But new fruit and blooms died almost immediately. By mid Oct the plants looked pretty bad but the established fruit looked fine, with butternuts turning brown and stems on all starting to dry out. I took home 1 small acorn and 1 small butternut and cooked them up on week of Oct 13. The acorn had hardly any meat (it was very small) and the meat was kind of watery. But it tasted ok after roasting and being mixed with butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. The butternut was also small but more like what you’d expect from butternut squash—had decent amount of flesh and tasted fine (cooked same way). I think this variety of butternut squash is worth trying again. Looks like about 90 lbs total harvest of butternut squash. I'd say this one's a keeper for next time. Plus 21 lbs acorn squash.
Please post your comments, your feedback is important!
Janice
POLE BEANS
5/15/11 - Lori - The pole bean seeds that we took home and grew into seedlings before planting appear to be doing MUCH better than the seeds we planted directly into the ground.
CUCUMBERS
8/29/10 - Jane - The cucumbers, planted mid-June, did well, but it was not expected that they would start dying off in late August, long before the hot season was over. We (or at least I) thought they would keep producing throughout the hot season. We ended up replanting the bed with cucumber seeds in late August. Next time we could anticipate this die-off and start seeds in a timely manner to minimize down time between old and new crops of cucumbers.
MARKING SEEDS AND SEEDLINGS
9/19/10 - Jane - We learned that we needed highly visible markers for new seeds and seedlings to ensure they got daily watering even when the mature plants didn't need water. Sandy Strong found some bright red flags at Home Depot and marked all the seeds and seedlings. That seems to be working well.
GEYSERS IN SOAKER HOSES
9/19/10 - Jane -- We learned that our soaker hoses spring geysers that waste water by squirting water where it isn't needed. The geysers themselves can be hard to spot, so the way to find them is to look for patches of wet ground in the beds or in the paths that shouldn't be wet. There will be a geyser spraying on them. We think that PVC tape wrapped around the hose at the location of the geyser is working. We don't care if the tape leaks a bit -- soaker hoses are supposed to leak -- we just don't want the water shooting somewhere unintended in the form of a geyser. Possible lesson learned -- the soaker hoses from Home Depot may not be the highest quality. There are more expensive, and therefore possibly better, ones on line.
BUSH BEANS
10/10/10 - Jane -- Bush beans solved one problem -- we didn't have to purchase or install poles or a lattice -- but the harvesters paid the price. The beans were LOW and HIDDEN. They had the harvesters wishing for pole beans.